


Betony and Ash

by reinkist



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Blood, Dreams and Nightmares, Dreamsharing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Experimental Style, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Major Character Injury, Medical Trauma, Not Platonic, Post Nibelheim, Trauma, Unresolved Romantic Tension, pre-game, the lifestream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-09 05:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11097543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reinkist/pseuds/reinkist
Summary: Something bright flickered out of the corner of his eye.Cloud sat up straight in alarm, hands tight and panicked on the edge of the table. Fire licked and twisted outside the windows of the bar."Don't look at it," Zack said, moving to block his line of sight. "You don't have to look at it."Cloud's chest heaved. There wasn't enough air. Everything tasted like smoke. The fire ate gaping, uneven holes in the wall. He could still see it, over Zack's shoulder."Cloud." Zack squeezed his arms with both hands. "You don't have to look."





	Betony and Ash

**Author's Note:**

> just want to point out real quick that this isn't based on anything but vanilla ff7. i'm not exactly caught up on any of the other games/movies/whatever, so you'll have to excuse whatever incongruence i'm sure there is
> 
> i hope some things don't seem too out of left field
> 
> please heed the tags

_Nothing._

_No, that isn't right._

_He thinks he has hands. They twitch. Clench. His nails dig into his palms, and the pain of it is dull and far away, like it belongs to someone else._

_No._

_That's not right._

_He has eyelids. He has eyes that sting and burn when he remembers that they open. Green..._

_That can't be right._

_He can't move. His limbs are heavy, like he's in full uniform, underwater. He's drowning. He's drowning. He chokes._

_That's not right._

_He's breathing. How? He remembers. There's a mask over his nose and mouth, and tubes down his throat._

_Everything is over._

_Everyone is dead._

  
The cold burned.

Cloud's jaw ached from it. His fingers were numb, his knuckles stiff. He couldn't feel the crunch of snow under his feet, but he pushed and pushed and pushed his legs until they screamed.

Tifa.

Zack.

_Sephiroth_

Nibelheim burned behind him, a nightmare of heat. His shadow contorted on the snow in front of him, black, twisting, grotesque, like something alive. Like something malicious.

It came from him.

He was causing it. He was

Darkness oozed from under his feet. His shadow spilled out over the snow, bulging and monstrous.

He was going to

No.

He had to.

He knew the way.

_Sephiroth_

His heart pounded so hard it ached.

  
_Even with his eyes open, there's nothing to see. A headache stabs behind his eyes when he tries to focus._

_Green shapes swim and pulse, all around him. Nothing makes sense._

_Nothing_

_He's alone._

_Blackness swells, and he falls._

  
He didn't even hurt, anymore.

He was cold.

He couldn't escape the coppery stench of blood. He could taste it. He was drowning in it. The more his heart beat, the more blood left his body. He could feel it draining from his arteries.

It was so cold.

Blood poured from the wound in his chest. He

His fingers slipped desperately on the slick floor. He could barely feel his heartbeat. He couldn't breathe

He was dying

_He was dying_

Everyone was gone.

He couldn't

  
_His chest aches._

_The walls around him are solid. Impenetrable._

_Unbearable._

_He wants to shatter them. Break himself on them, if he has to, but his limbs won't do what he tells them. He can't make a sound. He can't_

_He_

_Walls_

_Pressure_

_Trapped_

_**trapped** _

_Static roars between his ears._

_He can't stand it, **he can't stand it**_

_he_

_please_

_**please** _

  
Someone was lifting him. There were hands behind his shoulders, behind his knees. He was on a flat surface, but everything spun.

Agony exploded at his middle. They were hurting him. He had to fight. He struggled, but they held him down.

Nothing existed anymore but pain.

Cloud didn't remember hitting the ground. He curled in on himself, the jagged rocks catching at his clothes in a world far removed from the agony that swelled and swelled far beyond the point Cloud had ever imagined it could. He choked on the stench of smoke and burnt flesh, squeezing his arms over the mess at his middle where the fireball had struck him. A scream twisted in his throat, but it was trapped there, suffocating him.

Relief came like ice water soaking his chest. He could only gasp into the rocks as blessed numbness spread all the way to his fingertips.

There was chaos all around him.

Gunfire. The crackle of electricity, the smell of ozone. An earsplitting roar. Shouting, the scuffle of panicked footsteps, terrified screams of pain. Cloud pushed himself upright, shoulders leaving the ground, knuckles white against the freezing rocks.

"Cloud!" Zack's hand was around his bicep. He easily tugged Cloud to his feet. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." The words were out before Cloud knew whether or not his voice would work. The front of his uniform was a charred mess, but the skin underneath was smooth and unblemished.

"I got your back, man." Zack's eyes crinkled at the corners, and their glow burned into Cloud's vision as he turned back towards the battle, hefting his sword. He grinned a wolf's grin, wide and sharp. Cloud lifted his rifle.

His boots crunched in the snow, one step after another, until it wasn't snow under his feet at all, but tile. Sticky, stained. He and Zack were sitting on the same side of a booth at a shitty bar, off duty, somewhere hot. Cloud's uniform was soaked under the arms and around the collar. His hairline was damp.

Zack was buying, as usual. Cloud was drinking, probably too much - something about Zack always made Cloud's self-imposed limits dissipate like smoke. Zack exerted a force, like gravity. Magnetism. Energy practically burned him up at the core.

Cloud lowered his bottle. "Are you supposed to be doing that?" Zack began sucking at a bummed cigarette. The end flared red.

Zack grinned. "What? Are you kidding? Of course not." He exhaled fully, blowing the smoke upwards in a long stream. Cloud plucked the cigarette from between Zack's fingers, taking a long drag of it himself before stabbing it into the ashtray in the middle of the table. "Cloud! You!" Cloud blew smoke in his face, and Zack laughed, loud and drunk and genuine. "You piece of shit."

Cloud raised his bottle to his lips, happiness swelling, fierce, in his chest. Only a tiny trickle came out, and Zack laughed at his expression. Cloud laughed, too, and didn't break eye contact as he grabbed Zack's own bottle and took few good, long chugs from it.

Zack's mouth fell open in exaggerated disbelief. "What _is_ this?" he demanded, grabbing his bottle from Cloud's hand. "What the hell did _I_ do?"

"Get me another one," Cloud challenged, grinning, waggling his own bottle back and forth in Zack's face.

"Maybe I will," Zack said, like it was a comeback. He ruffled Cloud's hair when he stood, laughing, and something exciting twisted and coiled in Cloud's middle.

Zack crossed the room, farther and farther, and farther. The space between them stretched out, and out, narrowing to a tunnel, to a string, to a hair.

"Fuck off," Cloud yelled. His soup had slopped out of his bowl, all over his tray. Everyone at the mess hall got one meal each. That's how it worked, and now his evening meal was fucked. He rounded on the person who'd shoved him. "If you have a problem with me, why don't you just..."

Round, shocked, Mako eyes.

Cloud froze, terror and humiliation dousing him like icewater. "Sir! I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Sir! I didn't..." He did his best to salute, wide-eyed, clutching his dinner tray to his chest with one arm. The reprimand Cloud was expecting never came. The SOLDIER's eyebrows were drawn into such a stark expression of concern and apology that Cloud couldn't imagine what it could mean.

"Shit, shit, I am so, so sorry. I wasn't..." the SOLDIER blurted out, craning his neck to get a look at Cloud's tray. He hadn't even tried to hide his backcountry accent. "Oh, shit. Do you think you can...Oh. No. Shit. Wait!" His eyes flicked back up to Cloud's for a split second before he bounded over to an empty spot, a couple of tables away. "Switch with me," he yelled, holding up his own tray.

"No," Cloud exclaimed, too loud, stepping backward, once, twice. "Never mind, sir, never..." He could feel everyone's eyes on him, staring, narrowing, pushing at him to get out. To stop wasting everyone's time. To stop being such a fuckup. "No! No, sir, I don't..."

Before the SOLDIER could reach him with the tray, Cloud dropped his onto the nearest table and left the mess.

The hallway back to the barracks was full of people. All of their eyes were on Cloud, the weight of their gaze pressing into him with unbearable pressure. He tried to walk faster, but the more he tried the slower he went. Slower, slower and slower, until his legs wouldn't obey him at all. Hundreds of eyes were fixed on him, now. The buzzing between his ears swelled into a roar.

"Cloud."

The hill was steep, and there was a slick layer of ice over the snow. He'd slipped at the top because he'd been careless. He should have known better. He was such a fucking idiot.

No one had been around. At least none of the other kids had seen him. Humiliation twisted in his gut. Next time they might. It climbed up his throat. Burned behind his eyes. There can never be a next time. Ever. He began to climb, but the ice was too slick. He couldn't even make it up on his hands and knees. The snow that had caked on his clothing was starting to soak through, sapping his body heat, dragging him down.

"Cloud."

The mountains thrust from the earth, crowding, dagger-sharp, all around him. They'd chewed up the weak winter sun and swallowed it. He couldn't move. There was no way out. He was never going to

"Cloud."

He choked. There were faces in the snow, under his hands. Their eyes opened in unison.

"You don't have to be here."

  
_No._

_No_

_no_

_**No** _

_There's nothing_

_there's nothing_

_please_

_**please** _

_He remembers:_

_**Zack** _

_He struggles to open his eyes. Everything is a blur. Nothing makes sense. His head pounds. His eyes sting._

_When Cloud finally finds them, Zack's eyes are wide, and black, and fixed on his._

  
"See?"

The room pitched a little. The floor rocked to the left, then the right. Cloud knew he'd drunk too much, but it didn't matter.

Under the table, the outside of his thigh was pressed against Zack's. Zack had an arm over the back of the booth. If he leaned back, he could tuck his head into Zack's shoulder.

He held that knowledge close, like a secret, precious, glowing stone. Zack smiled down at him. His eyes were so warm, absolutely burning from behind. The room spun, but it didn't matter.

Something bright flickered out of the corner of his eye.

Cloud sat up straight in alarm, hands tight and panicked on the edge of the table. Fire licked and twisted outside the windows of the bar.

"Don't look at it," Zack said, moving to block his line of sight. "You don't have to look at it."

Cloud's chest heaved. There wasn't enough air. Everything tasted like smoke. The fire ate gaping, uneven holes in the wall. He could still see it, over Zack's shoulder.

"Cloud." Zack squeezed his arms with both hands. "You don't have to look."

  
_Zack is here._

_Cloud's chest aches. He fights to lift his arm. It's tortuously heavy. He feels lightheaded with the effort. Sick._

_The wall is slick. His fingers slip on it, and his palm meets the surface, an anchor touching the seabed._

_Zack_

_**Zack** _

_Zack's eyes soften. His hand comes up, pressing white against the inside of his own prison. His eyes widen, and intensify._

_**Don't look** _

_Cloud doesn't know how to stop._

  
"Here."

The branches were black, interlaced like fingers over the sun. The leaves glowed, lit from behind by the blinding blue sky. They were hard to look at, like something caught, impossibly, between two frames of a film reel might be. Their shadows fluttered on the ground.

Zack squeezed his shoulder. "Come on." He slid his hand down Cloud's arm, grabbing Cloud's own, tugging him off down the dirt road that began to unfurl before them, into the trees.

"Where are we?" Cloud asked, but Zack didn't answer.

A creek tumbled off a rocky shelf, roaring into a muddy pool. Cloud scrambled down the steep embankment after Zack, bracing himself on one tree after another with his free hand. Branches caught at his clothing. Decaying leaves slid under his feet.

Zack pulled him along the edge of the pool. One side of the cliff was rock, dark and slick with moisture. The other was dirt, and clumps of roots thrust out of it like skeletal fingers. Water sprayed him as Zack dragged him behind the waterfall.

"This was the best place ever when I was a kid," Zack said, tapping his chin with one finger. They'd emerged into a small, muddy cave. The walls dripped at the entrance. It smelled like dirt and rain and growth.

Cloud looked at Zack, not sure what to do, or say.

Zack bounded to the back wall. There were all sorts of things, there, scratched into the rock. Cloud couldn't focus on them. They all seemed to crawl. The only clear word was "ZACK" -- scrawled in large, unpracticed letters, a couple of feet up -- and Zack pointed eagerly at it. "See?"

"Oh."

"All the other kids in town were a lot older than me." In a fluid motion, Zack grabbed up a flattish rock from the floor of the cave. He tossed it into the air, and easily caught it. "So I was the only one left. After _they_ all left town, I mean." He tossed the rock up and down a few more times, eyes fixed on it. "I missed them, I guess. I used to come here to look at all the shit they put on the wall. I mean, mostly I was trying to get out of doing chores, but..."

"I know what you're doing," Cloud said, mouth twisting.

"So?" He felt Zack's smile, more than saw it. "Oh, yeah." Zack knelt in the dirt, shooting a quick glare over one shoulder. "Don't look." He made a big show of shielding the wall with his body, eyes still on Cloud, and raised the rock. Cloud snorted, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards. He averted his eyes.

"This isn't gonna make it go away," Cloud said, eyes trained on the floor.

"Yeah, I know." Zack's rock scraped the wall. "Check it out."

Cloud looked up at him, eyebrows furrowed. Zack was sitting back on his heels, a thumb crooked at the wall behind him. After his own name he'd added a plus sign, then, "CLOUD".

"Zack," Cloud warned, but he couldn't stop the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

Zack shrugged. "I call it like I see it."

The sudden absence of the waterfall sucked at Cloud's ears, and he looked reflexively back at the cave's entrance. The hectic forest light was gone. Instead there was stone, rough and back, and snow, glittering in the sun.

Cloud took Zack's hand and pulled him out onto the street.

"Hey. This is Nibelheim. You never talk about..." Zack trailed off, squeezing Cloud's hand.

Cloud couldn't look at him. "Yeah." He pulled Zack along in silence. Across the square. Down the street. Into an alley.

"It's nice. Cold, maybe..."

He dropped Zack's hand. Everything was where it used to be. There was a sconce holding up the single lamp at the back door of the clothing shop. He closed a hand around it, then found a foothold on the single brick that had been placed unevenly, so that it stuck out farther than the others. He swung himself up onto a large garbage bin, then boosted himself up onto the roof.

He looked back down at Zack, feet hanging over the edge. Zack gave a half-smile, even though worry creased his forehead. But Zack followed him anyway, mimicking his actions, easily climbing after him.

"If you go all the way back here," Cloud said, crawling on his knees across the roof, "nobody can find you." He sat with his back against the wall of the building next door, neatly sandwiched between the wall and the incline of the roof, too far back to be seen from the alley. Someone would have to climb up the same way he had to be able to see him.

Zack crawled closer, then pulled his legs underneath him, sitting crosslegged. "So you hung out up here a lot?"

"Yeah." Cloud leaned his head back against the brick. "Mom always used to ask where I was. I never told her."

The sky was darkening, the clouds bulging, deep blue and black. Zack lowered his gaze to Cloud. "You never talked about her, before."

"You never talk about your parents, either." Zack's eyes were unwavering, and bottomless. "Look." Cloud pushed himself to his feet, bracing himself on the wall behind him. "If you stand over here you can see the street."

There was a spot where the angle of the roof next door left just enough room for line of sight down to the end of the alley. The lamps blinked on, one after another, pinpricks of gold in the mushrooming dark. The sky was black, now. Empty, like the town had been plucked from the planet and dropped in a bottle.

Zack was still looking at Cloud from his seat on the wide, slate shingles. Cloud couldn't meet his eyes, so he stared back out at the street. There was a shadow there, now, falling across the entrance to the alley.

"I didn't want to come back here," Cloud admitted. He risked another glance at Zack. "Not really. Not after I'd been gone. Not after I made my own..." The shadow had grown. Darkened. Resolved itself into a figure. "I don't know." Mid-length skirt. High ponytail. "Life."

Zack's gaze was level and unwavering. "I know what you mean. I ain't gone home since..." Zack's mouth twisted. "Never mind."

The hairs at the back of Cloud's neck prickled. The knowledge of the presence at the mouth of the alley wouldn't leave him alone. Prying eyes, searching for him. And when they found him, always watching. His own eyes snapped back to the alley, his stomach tightening, his heart tripping.

The shadow twitched and bent down the alley. Its arms stretched forward, joints all wrong, hands impossibly large. It clawed at the cobblestones with lengthening fingers, closer and closer. Cloud couldn't move. The street behind it had turned black. Pulling and sucking, like tar.

"Hey." Cloud didn't realize how hard his heart was pounding until Zack's hands squeezed his shoulders. "Cloud?"

"I didn't want her to _die_ ," Cloud blurted out. They both watched the shadow feel around the alley, adrenaline leaving Cloud cold and his hands strange. Long black fingers groped systematically along the foundations of the buildings, searching, unseeing. "I just had to leave."

"Yeah." Zack didn't entirely know what he was agreeing to, but he'd seen enough. "Yeah."

"She never found me up here."

"Right. Right."

The shadow passed underneath them, and where cobblestone should have been was blackness, dark and deep as well water. Cloud was paralyzed. Nobody could find him if he didn't move.

"Cloud?" Zack's hands were steady on his shoulders. "Hey." Cloud was hunched, tense, head bowed, and Zack needed to see his face, to see his eyes. "That shit don't matter anymore, right?"

Cloud turned away from the alley. He shot a glance at Zack, brow furrowed. Zack gave him a quick, reassuring half-smile.

There was a door in the wall. It wasn't supposed to be there, and Cloud wouldn't have been able to say exactly when it had appeared. Zack followed his gaze, and Cloud started toward it, tugging on his wrist.

A little bell jingled when the door closed. The lights were dim. The leather on all the booth benches was worn and cracked. It was hot. Smoke rose from a stubbed-out cigarette in an ashtray.

"You like this place."

Cloud shrugged.

Zack tilted his head, studying him. "Why?"

The bar was completely empty. Cloud couldn't remember if it had always been like that, or not. "We had fun."

"Okay." Zack's eyebrows shot up, skeptical. His eyes narrowed. "And?"

Cloud leaned against the door, arms crossed over his chest, one leg over the other, crossed at the ankle. "It was one of the only times we got to spend..." His eyes flicked up to Zack's, and he hesitated. "You know. Together."

Zack studied Cloud intently: the rise and fall of his chest, the stubborn set of his jaw. "Yeah. It was." Cloud remained silent. He stood his ground, eyes on Zack's.

Outside, the clouds bulged with rain that never fell. The humidity had been almost unbearable, but Cloud hadn't given a shit. Not really.

"Where are we going?" Zack asked. The stepped along the sidewalk, the sound of their boots deadened by the grass growing up through a spiderweb of cracks.

"We went to the beach, remember?" Cloud's eyes were fixed on the concrete. Zack's hand swung next to his. Cloud's looked so small and pale in comparison.

"Yeah. I remember."

The water was strange and dark, the sky flat as the painted backdrop of a stage. The black sea lapped at the white sand, and Zack watched the forming line of footprints as Cloud rushed to the edge of the water.

"You really like the ocean, yeah?" Zack called, jogging after him.

Cloud's eyes gleamed briefly over his shoulder, startled, electric blue. "I guess so."

Zack snorted. He obviously did.

"I never saw it before." Cloud risked another glance. Zack was looking at him like he did sometimes, smile crooked, eyes soft, like Cloud was a better person than he'd ever actually been.

"Me either," Zack said, after a moment. He raised a hand to Cloud's back, resting it between Cloud's bony shoulder blades. Cloud looked up at him for a second, startled at the contact, but immediately dropped his eyes back down to the water.

A wave rushed toward their feet, larger and faster than any of the others. They both reflexively stepped backwards, and Zack laughed.

"I like this place." He remembered being here, in a hazy series of snapshots. The two of them running along the beach in full uniform, kicking up sand. Stars glittering over the water, endless and dizzying, Cloud solid and warm at his side. Cloud laughing his head off, for the first time actually looking as young as Zack knew he had to be.

"I wish we got to come back here," Cloud said, voice stilted. Strange.

"We will. Sometime we will."

Cloud walked back to the edge of the water, eyebrows furrowed. Zack let out a long breath at the tense, defensive line of his shoulders.

"What? You don't trust me?" Zack lifted his chin, grinning, hands on his hips, unbelievably, genuinely cocky. Cloud looked back at him, mouth twisting, skeptical.

"Of course I do," Cloud said, slowly. Zack absolutely beamed at him, and a familiar ache clenched in Cloud's chest. Another wave rushed towards his feet, and he only just managed to jump back in time. He joined Zack safely out of range, eyes glued again to the sand.

"Then trust me." Zack squeezed Cloud's shoulder, his eyes fixed on that downturned profile -- the curve of his eyelid, the fan of his eyelashes. Cloud leaned toward him, dropping his head just enough to obscure his face completely with all that pale, uneven hair.

Zack's hand was solid on Cloud's shoulder. Cloud leaned closer without even meaning to, and Zack's arm slipped around his back, comfortable and practiced. "I don't know if...I don't know how much longer I'll be..."

"Cloud," Zack began, and squeezed him around the shoulders in a fierce rush of protectiveness. "You're my best friend. You know that, right?"

Cloud leaned fully into him, his cheek against Zack's chest. Zack's other arm came up to encircle his back, and Cloud could hardly breathe around the overwhelming swell of emotion rising inside him. "You're my best friend, too," he said in a rush, lifting his arms to wrap around Zack's middle, palms tentative against his back.

Zack's chest rose and fell under his cheek, the thump of his heart steady under Cloud's ear. His thumb stroked back and forth over Cloud's shoulder, and Cloud didn't want to die, not actually. Not anymore.

"Nobody's ever told me that, before," Cloud admitted.

Zack rested his cheek against Cloud's hair, a little breathless, heart thumping. "I never told anyone that before, either."

Cloud snorted into his chest.

"So if you think I'm just gonna leave you there, or something, you're wrong."

Cloud's arms tightened, and Zack squeezed him back, as tightly as he could, until Cloud's heels left the ground. The water was rising, and the tide wet the toes of their boots.

  
_Zack still feels so weak._

_He guesses almost dying probably does that to a person._

_Zack flexes his fingers, one after another, then his wrists. He lifts his arms until the backs of his hands meet the thick, unyielding plastic of the tube. He presses outwards as hard as he can -- until his muscles burn -- and repeats the action in reps of twenty. He flips his hands so that his palms are facing outward, and does it again. There's a tiny ledge around the lid of the tube that he can use to do pull-ups. It's harder to exercise his legs, but he still lifts and extends them as often as he can._

_It isn't an ideal workout routine, that's for sure. But if they thought they could keep him out of action, they were dead fucking wrong._

_He promised Cloud they'd get out._

_He's never made a promise he couldn't keep._

_Zack keeps a steady eye on Cloud. Watches him intently. Cloud is so still, most of the time, his eyes so blank and lifeless that sometimes Zack is terrified that he is dead, after all. Something unbearable squeezes in Zack's chest at the pallor of his skin, at the ethereal way his hair floats around his face, so pale and still._

_Zack waits, and watches Cloud dream._


End file.
